for amelia bird

You walked out
of your kindergarten classroom
for the last time today.

This year has felt
impossibly long
and also
like the blink of an eye.

Being a parent stretches
your capacity for instant nostalgia,
for attempts to wrap
your arms and mind
around something that was here

just a second ago
and is now gone.
It bruises your heart

the way muscles bruise
when you push them
to run faster,
carry more and more
weight.
It is a good bruise
that means we are all becoming

who we are.

first day of school

When I left your classroom
on the first day
I made it as far as I could. 

I hurried past the other teary moms,
pushed through the school's front doors into the warm September morning. 
I bit my lips.  I looked at the sky,
watched my shoes. 

I made it to my car.  Before I cried.

I cried while I tried to imagine what you were doing. 
It felt so foreign to have to guess, to not simply know.
I drove slowly through our town.

Back and forth
on sunny streets.

And I let my heart break
over the wonder and pride
and utter loss
I felt
over your first day of school.

I finally parked
and wandered
into a basement thrift store.
As I walked slowly through the store
a woman I barely knew
smiled and asked me
how are you
just the way people do.

I had never before cried
on a stranger's shoulder.
All I could say was
it's my daughter's first day
of kindergarten before she
wrapped me in her arms
with an awe, honey.

I cried because I couldn't see your face.
I cried because how can this be right,
to send you far from me
each day?
I cried because what if your feelings were hurt,
or you were tired, or you needed me?

I cried because
I love you more
than anything.
I cried because I was afraid
you'd struggle

and maybe you'd fall.

But you flew, Bird.


Of course you did.

sweet gray morning

An hour alone in a coffee shop feels ridiculously indulgent.  Nevermind the mellow gray skies hanging low outside, the door propped open wide.  Nevermind the cool, fresh air, we'll happily leave sweaters and fleeces on, just order another hot americana and marvel and the soft voices, the lazy trickle of customers through the open door.  Greens are lush on the sidewalk of the flower shop across the street, the peonies and geraniums are brilliant in the muted light.

We happily bubble toward this new season, faces tilted up, raised to new rain, soft air, pale sunlight that makes us squint like old friends trying to place one another.  

This morning I ran for miles, climbed a small mountain or maybe a large hill.  Breathed in and out.  Felt like I was floating.  I want to absorb this precise beauty, this pace, to hold its quiet loveliness inside my chest and sip from it when I need it most.  When I'm rushed, or tired - maybe I can find this reservoir.

There are things I need to do this morning.  I need to find cowgirl boots to wear to a wedding this weekend.  I need to buy a new coloring book or two to help ease the drive.  I need to pick my car up from the shop.  Good little things.  Good little morning.

weekend: spring rain

I didn't think they'd climb all the way.  First, crossing our pastures then climbing over the woven wire fence into our neighbor's dryland hills.  They were wearing rain boots, had gone looking for puddles before spotting the silhouette of a herd of antelope at the top of the hill.  I watched them grow smaller as they waded the ocean of grass.  

I caught up with them just before they reached the top.  Thrilled with their solo climb, they pointed to the Pioneer Mountains, Lets do those next!

I spent hours in the hoop house, listening to soft rain on the roof.  The smell, the softness of the air was something I had nearly forgotten.  Rain.

I want to plant everything at once.  Today I settled for transplanting all 35 tomatoes and planting bean and summer squash seeds.  My hands feel like sandpaper and my muscles are tired and happy.

This weekend we built tents,

soaked up the heavy gray skies,

& took naps...among other things.

drought

The sky fills with water.  Violet clouds streak down toward the mountains.  The smell of rain thickens the air, then suddenly moves on.  We watch blue break the clouds apart with something like despair.

Trucks of cattle roll through town, heading south to the stockyard. We talk of snowpack, grazing allotments, headgates. I feel greedy for water, like a real westerner, proud that I finally understand this precarious balance we keep. 


I don't know when I've ever slept like this.  It goes beyond the sleep of sunlicked skin and tired muscles.  This sleep drives me from my body, wipes clean the slate of my mind, leaves me heavy and disoriented in the morning.  I sleep with intensity, dropping through mattress and floorboards into vibrant colors, complex storylines, aware only of vast depths below like someone adrift  on a still sea.

On my run - antelope tracks arch like lips in the dust of the trail.  I can tell we are moving in the same direction.  They veer to a low pocket of ground, a small depression that caught enough snowmelt to green the tough windblown grass that grows along the sagebrush.

When the sun hits a pivot's spray it looks like heaven.  Lush alfalfa tangles in a blur of new green beneath the spray.  All around the dryland fields are bleached nearly white.

I wake in the dark to the sound of water.  At first I think I've left a sprinkler running, but I haven't.  Rain.
The air is full of water.